NIRSA is committed to supporting the development of #GreatLeaders and the NIRSA Leadership Commission is excited to announce the newly created and populated Leadership Community of Practice!
Because leadership development is a consistent component of the collegiate recreation profession, NIRSA is excited to provide this online discussion forum and resource library platform for NIRSA members to share practical tools and strategies for promoting and delivering intentional leadership development to both student and professional staff. Additionally, the online discussion forum provides a dedicated space for members to raise and respond to questions from colleagues across North America, and beyond.
The NIRSA Leadership Commission invites and encourages all NIRSA members—as members of the Association for leaders in collegiate recreation—to join this online community. When you do, you will find dozens of resources already populated in the resource library—everything from key concepts and terminology related to leadership development theory to best practices to practical tools and strategies.
Another resource that the Leadership Commission has been working hard to develop is a series of chapter study guides for the recent publication Student Leadership Development through Recreation and Athletics.
Beyond just joining this online community and exploring the resources already available there, we invite you to share resources related to intentional leadership development from your own campus by uploading documents to the resource library.
What’s next for the Leadership Commission
The NIRSA Leadership Commission has been working over the last 18 months to develop resources for the Leadership Community of Practice’s resource library. It has also been working on a handful of presentations for the 2017 NIRSA Annual Conference. Specifically, we invite you all to join us at “Student Leadership Development through Collegiate Recreation.” Many other sessions at NIRSA 2017 will be focused on the topic of intentional leadership development; check out the full suite of NIRSA 2017 sessions on the NIRSA website, or download the free NIRSA 2017 app.
NIRSA’s six strategic value areas were adopted in 2011 for the purpose of elevating and intentionally integrating our core values into the campus recreation profession. In establishing the Strategic Value Commissions, NIRSA affirmed that living our values will never be finished; once these values have been well integrated into the fabric of NIRSA, they will continue to be part of our daily work lives.
Overall the efforts to integrate the strategic values have been successful. The strategic values have been integrated into the core competencies for the profession. The Program Committees for the NIRSA Annual Conference as well as NIRSA Institutes and The School also continue to use the values as criteria for selection of presentation topics.
After the Annual Conference and with the conclusion of the 2016-2017 NIRSA leadership year, the appointments of the volunteers serving on the Leadership Commission will come to an end and Commissioners will transition to active members of the Leadership Community of Practice. A benefit of this transition is that the communities of practice offer members an open forum to actively participate in.
Participation in the communities of practice is democratic, and eliminates the barrier of application and appointment. This change will open participation to a larger number of NIRSA members. NIRSA leadership believes that continued support to live our values will be best facilitated by an online community of practice that continues to engage members and provide resources in the value areas.
We look forward to moving the conversation around the intentional leadership development of student and professional staff into the new Leadership Community of Practice. Join today!
- For more information about NIRSA’s leadership development resources, contact Mila Padgett, Director of Campus Recreation and Wellness at the University of South Carolina Aiken and Chair of the NIRSA Leadership Commission.
NIRSA's Leadership Commission is comprised of volunteer campus recreation professionals and students from across North America. A full roster of volunteers is available on the Leadership Commission page of the NIRSA website.
